Through the Trapdoor
by TeddyBear334
Summary: Against her better judgement, Hermione jumps. Twice.
1. Where Dwell The Brave at Heart

_"All — all three of us?"_

_"Oh, come off it, you don't think we'd let you go alone?"_

_"Of course not," said Hermione briskly. "How do you think you'd get to the Stone without us? – PS, pg. 200_

**Part I: ****Where Dwell the Brave at Heart**

She and Ron waited on tenterhooks, and Hermione imagined all the horrible things that might have happened to Harry. Her fingers worked over the flute in no particular pattern, but the three-headed dog didn't seem to have discriminating tastes. She leaned carefully over the gaping hole, waiting for the sound of crumpling limbs that surely must be coming.

"It's okay!" Harry called. Or at least, she supposed it was Harry. The voice echoed strangely and Hermione wondered how far down Harry really was. She didn't dare lean any farther forward.

Beside her, Ron was shifting his shoulders as though steeling himself. He swung his legs over so that they dangled into the hole below. "See you in a minute," he said, before sliding gently into the gaping blackness.

A sense of bewilderment washed over her. She felt as though he had missed a step somewhere. Hermione Jean Granger did not go where she wasn't permitted to be. Hermione Jean Granger trusted teachers implicitly. So how was it that Hermione Jean Granger came to be in a forbidden room with a three-headed dog of mythical proportions, after hours and against explicit orders from Hagrid and Professor McGonagall?

Never mind the gaping hole, into which she was expected to _jump_. Imagine!

No one had ever told her she was brave, except for her parents, who had to say such things. Because she wasn't brave, she was clever. Hermione was certainly clever. Twelve years had been long enough to teach her this. Hermione Granger knew the answer to the teachers' questions. People had been telling her she was clever since she could talk. Hermione was secure in her own cleverness. When someone was rude to her, Hermione Granger did the clever thing and did not allow herself to be baited into a fight. But Hermione Granger couldn't even work up the nerve to jump from a moving swing or climb to the top of the play structure.

The Sorting Hat could babble about destiny all it wanted, but she knew it was all rubbish. There was no amount of magic that could make her believe in the Fates pulling the strings. People were what they were.

She told her parents that she didn't think the Sorting Hat had made the best choice and her father had written that courage was one of those things you had to practice. The idea came from a philosopher whose name she couldn't remember. In the letter, her father had said it was like playing piano or doing maths. Save enough people from burning buildings and eventually it was second nature. But when her father told her to practice courage, she was pretty sure he meant things like being brave enough to make friends with her dormitory mates and joining clubs. Not trapdoors.

For the first eleven years, eight months, and six days of Hermione's life, she had known who she would be. She didn't know whether she could study law or medicine or business, but there had always been a rough sketch of the life of muggle Hermione Granger. She would get plenty of A's and A*'s and they would use words like "highest distinction" when she finished university. She would marry late, to someone in academia, medicine, finance, or something equally respectable and intellectual, and they would settle down. It was perfectly straightforward and convenient. For eleven years, eight months, and six days, she had wanted that life.

Then Professor McGonagall arrived and Hermione felt as though everything she had ever known about herself was wrong. The walls of St. Mary's Secondary School toppled and when the dust had cleared, it was barely a memory. Hogwarts had seemed more real every day, despite the ghosts and talking photos and moving stairs. For a few weeks, Hermione was unsure of her place in this new world, but then she stumbled into Flourish and Blotts and there was order again. She would be a clever witch. She could be the wizarding equivalent of a solicitor or a doctor or a professor. She thought she had things on straight again.

Then that hat had to go and give her that ridiculous tosh about _destiny_ and put her Gryffindor, against Hermione's better judgment. Hermione's entire life spiraled out in front of her, but she couldn't see the end as she had before.

Harry and Ron were Gryffindors to a fault. Hermione had no such instinct.

There was Nobert, she supposed. That which had landed Hermione Granger in detention for the first time in her entire life. But that had been a necessary risk. Logical even. They had to get him away from Hagrid's house, didn't they? Anyone who cared for Hagrid would have done the same. Besides, she had been afraid that whole night. True, her fear had had more to do with being caught (which they had been), than it did with the dragon itself, but fear was fear. Harry hadn't been afraid that night. She had never known Harry to be truly afraid of anything.

She stared down at the dark hole, into which first both boys had jumped without a second thought. But Hermione thought about everything.

And well, she had snuck into the teacher's box at the Quidditch match. But that was only because she hadn't wanted Snape to hurt Harry. She had clambered over Ron and run in the general direction of the teacher's box, and decided on flames as she was climbing up the teacher's section. That might not count as bravery, if she couldn't really remember choosing to get out of her seat in the first place. Besides, it was only a way to work out whether she was right about Snape.

But she wanted to be brave, didn't she?

Hermione Granger wanted to argue with teachers when they were totally and completely wrong. She wanted to stomp up the corridor toward people like Draco Malfoy and Hannah Rogers-Kelly and call them names right back. She wanted to jump down into the darkness and bravely rescue the stone.

The stone. She had forgotten the reason they had come to be here in the first place. Snape was already through the trapdoor, Harry had said so. The thought of Snape with stone was a horrid one, but the thought of Snape realizing that he was not alone and turning upon Harry and Ron, well, she didn't like to think of it.

The music of the flute came in quick and raspy notes as Hermione thought anxiously of her friends.

Harry and Ron weren't exactly bad, especially when they bothered to pay attention in lessons, but all three of them knew that Hermione was the best at magic. She had to jump, she decided. The boys stood a better chance if Hermione was with them. It was only logical.

"Come on, Hermione!" called Ron.

She closed her eyes and gripped the trapdoor.

When she opened her eyes again, she was already falling.


	2. Daring, Nerve, and Chivalry

_Then Hermione walked forward and took her place between the other two, Harry pulled the Cloak down as far as it would go, and together they turned on the spot into the crushing darkness. – DH, pg. 446 _

**Part II: Daring, Nerve, and Chivalry**

Ron drew himself up. "I've got it." He said with a confidence that was probably for his own benefit as much as Hermione's.

She didn't dare breathe as Ron tried his best to imitate the sibilant sounds of Parseltongue. The sound that came from his lips didn't sound quite like Parseltongue, but it was apparently close enough. The tap began glowing with white light, and Hermione suspected that it would have been hot to the touch. Then the sink descended out of sight, leaving a large pipe exposed. The pipe was perhaps slightly larger than the kind found at children's play parks, and she was fairly certain that Ron's broom could have been laid across the mouth of the pipe.

"How deep does it go?"

She couldn't help trying to work out the location of the chamber, even after learning over and over that magic wasn't bound by petty things like physical space.

"Oh, I forgot, you've never been down here, have you?"

The question was rhetorical, but she shook her head anyway. She knew that both Ron and Harry had gone down into the chamber, but Harry alone had fought the basilisk. Merlin, that felt like ages ago. Five years. She had seen pictures of herself at twelve. Six stone and wearing excruciatingly white tights. The boys hadn't been much better. And yet, they had been brewing potions in bathrooms and confronting dark magic.

"It's—Well, it'll be easier with a broomstick," said Ron bracingly.

Hermione looked skeptically at the school broom in Ron's hand. "You're sure that thing can hold both of us?"

"They're not top of the line, these brooms, but they're sturdy enough to hold the two of us."

Ron climbed onto the broom and motioned for Hermione to climb on behind him. Hermione did not have a great fondness for brooms, and didn't move forward.

The broom looked like the kind of thing that belonged in Mrs. Weasley's pantry. A bundle of twigs and a thin piece of wood. And Ron expected her to just trust a flimsy piece of wood to hold her up in the air. Actually, it was worse than that. Ron expected her to trust it to hold both of them up the air.

Ron cracked a smile. "You were flying over London on the back of a dragon not six hours ago."

She hadn't much liked that either. Which he knew perfectly well, since she had spent the first twenty minutes screaming into his ear and sobbing into his robes.

Still, she was Hermione Granger. She had ridden an invisible thestral from Scotland to London, and used Buckbeak to break Sirius out of prison. And as Ron said, it had only been hours ago when she had been riding on the back of that poor dragon, gripping Ron with one hand and throwing off blasting curses with the other.

"You're sure it will hold?"

"I'm sure. You're not going to fall. And if—if you did, I'll catch you."

It sounded romantic, like the superhero catching the damsel in distress as she falls from a skyscraper. And yet, the three of them had been together for so long that swooping into save one of the other two felt like the most natural thing in the world. She knew the kinds of things that would send Ron or Harry into a free fall, and she would always be ready to swoop in and catch them.

Still, there was still the matter of her own lack of flying skills. Not to mention her ability to kill a Horcrux. Oh Merlin, the Horcrux. "But—"

"You can do this, Hermione. All of this."

Ron had a habit of allaying fears she hadn't even managed to articulate yet.

She bit her lip, but climbed awkwardly onto the end of the broom.

"It's going to be a bit of a steep drop, so just hold onto me as tight as you can, yeah?"

"Right," said Hermione. She pulled herself closer to Ron so that her cheek was resting against his now-filthy t-shirt. Her hands were clasped together and wrapped around his torso, but the fingers on her right hand were squeezed into the handle of the cup, making it difficult to hold onto Ron properly.

He chuckled slightly. His big hands here on hers, tugging her hands apart. "Hold onto my waist, Hermione."

She steeled herself for a half-moment before placing her hands just above his hip bones. The pair of them shuffled awkwardly to the edge of the hole.

"We have to jump at the same time, so I'll count to three. Ready?"

Hermione remembered dragons, hippogriffs, and thestrals. And centaurs, giants, werewolves, skrewts, trolls, and three-headed dogs. She's Hermione Jean Granger. She can do this.

"Ready."

"1."

She tightened her grip.

"2."

She closed her eyes.

"3."

She leapt.

A/N: Reviews make me a better writer.


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